[traveller15]

Just my 2 cents...

As somebody that spent the past 1.5 year traveling around the world while working on a bleeding edge software that requires deep mathematical research and non-trivial integration, I came to the following:

- dedicate time during the day when you focus solely on the task you need to solve. Don't allow anything else to interrupt you nor do any interleaving with other activities. For example, you decide to focus between 7-11am, then do something else and come back between 3pm-7pm or any other time suitable to you. Don't slack off when you have to think, manage your weaknesses.

I found that this does wonders to my productivity. Often during the breaks/sleep I get excellent ideas and have enough power to carry them out. I also suddenly have a plenty of time when I can focus on my hobbies (a lot of them), persons I like to be with and on running my own business on the side.

There was some research in Germany comparing the lives of virtuoso pianists with average ones - the only difference was the virtuosos got completely immersed in their practice twice a day, whereas the average ones interleaved all kinds of activities with their practice.

This is coming from a person that prepared some of the most challenging and business-differentiating algorithms for a start up in the computer graphics area (mostly advanced geometry, SIGGRAPH Pioneer member), and still manages to dedicate time to fashion photography, making hyperlapse movies, composing electronic music, playing piano, fiddling with interesting technology like drones, writing training materials and e-books, place at the top 1% of multiple pilot MOOC courses and loves to socialize.

If you need to ask anything, let me know, I would be more than happy explain to you my recent nomad lifestyle! This is a throwaway account as I don't want to be easily identifiable ;-)

[tosbourn]

Hey anon! Thanks so much for writing this.

I love that research - I think I had heard of it or something similar before, certainly something I should take on board.

My hope is that a 2 hour time frame should focus me to work on one task, and if the task is bigger than can be completed in two hours, it probably needs to be split up anyway.

This comment is a huge inspiration, cheers!

[traveller15]

Good luck! 8-)

It's doable - have fun and a superb quality of life! ;-)

[alberto_rico]

Maybe off-topic but, as a fellow nomad, I'd love to read how you deal with the weeks before moving. As active as I can be upon arrival, I feel my energy depleted when the time to part approaches. This means I'm less productive, and less prone to social interaction, as if looking forward to the next destination.

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

[traveller15]

Greetings fellow nomad! :)

I try to schedule the best fun at the end so that I depart the location when it rocks - it serves for both having fantastic memories of the place and filling me with a lot of energy. If I can, I try to take a few days off just before moving and I always book flights on Friday evening/Saturday so that I have enough time to sleep through jet lag (with the support of melatonin supplements etc.) Sometimes this is challenging if I am for example in Japan, then the next day I need to be in France and three days later in the US.

I spend the beginning of a visit by strongly focusing and adapting to the new environment until my performance is steady; then I can have some fun.

For example while in the New Zealand I did all the crazy stuff in Queenstown in the last week - skydiving, nevis bungy, cliff jump, rafting, mtb downhill, milford sound kayaking etc.

I am sure you can find some things you are looking forward to at any place that would in turn energize you ;-)

[ronaldx]

I would love to know what you are working on!

[traveller15]

I don't want to divulge any details though the notice about the project's release was already posted on hacker news as well as on reddit ;-)